NLRB Says Card Check is Fine - for Union Busting

Is the NLRB in favor of majority card check? Apparently so, according to a Aug. 10 ruling – but in this case only when it favors an employer who wants to scuttle a union contract.

The unusual case involved 1,600 Shaw's Supermarkets employees in Massachusetts who were in the fourth year of a five-year agreement.  After determining that a majority of workers had signed a union decertification petition, Shaw's immediately withdrew recognition instead of allowing a decertification election process to proceed.

The NLRB's Republican majority overturned 40 years of labor law precedent in allowing an employer to withdraw recognition during the life of a contract without waiting for the outcome of the workers' vote. Until this case, only a non-party to a collective bargaining agreement, an employee or rival union – not an employer – could challenge the union's majority status while a contract is still in effect, and only through an election.